Guidewires have enabled development of selective angiography, including coronary, cerebral, renal, hepatic, pancreatic and bowel angiography. Also, transcatheter embolization, pharmacologic vasoconstriction, and balloon angioplasty include use of such guidewires. Catheters inserted with guidewires have additionally been used for percutaneous drainage and removal of calculi from obstructed biliary and urinary systems. These procedures often require that the guidewire employed be of a precise diameter. However, several different guidewires can be required for a single procedure and differences in guidewire diameters generally can only be detected quickly by tactile comparison.
Open trays which are filled with a fluid, such as a heparin solution, are typically employed to immerse guidewires in preparation for their use. Guidewires are often inadvertently contaminated during a procedure due to lack of proper storage and must be discarded. Waste of guidewires, therefore, results when a guidewire of the same diameter is required twice during a single operation. In addition, guidewires are typically only loosely assembled in trays, often causing confusion and loss of time during selection of a suitable guidewire. Fluids can also be spilled easily from open trays. Further, a relatively large area of space is usually required for open trays, thereby reducing the mobility of physicians and nurses.
Therefore, a need exists for a new apparatus for storing and retrieving guidewires during cardiovascular (CV) or other interventional procedures which overcomes or minimizes the aforementioned problems.